


Honest confessions

by Pearlislove



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Confessions, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Heart-to-Heart, Post-Episode: s10e3 Thin Ice, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-02
Updated: 2017-05-02
Packaged: 2018-10-26 22:38:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10796184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pearlislove/pseuds/Pearlislove
Summary: While putting their 18th Century clothes back in the closet, Bill and The Doctor continue their discussion on loss and death."You've seen people die. You've killed people. So how many have you really lost?" Bill's voice quivered as she spoke, fear in her eyes as she waited for her answer. She was scared, so scared, that he would have forgotten the names of those he used to love.





	Honest confessions

**Author's Note:**

> Bill and the Twefth Doctor had such a a deep conversation in thin ice, and I really feel they weren't done with it quite yet
> 
>  
> 
> I really don't know why they always end up crying ehen I write about these two

She's returning her clothes to the TARDIS wardrobe. They're still wet with water from the Thames - in 1814 - but The Doctor ensured her that it was just to put them on the hanger and hang them up somewhere. She had asked if he wanted her to hang up his clothes, too, but he was still fighting Nardole and she decided to let it go.   
  
Once her clothes has been hung up, she put her own back on, and she is just about to leave, when something catch her attention.   
  
Lying on the floor in a corner, covered in dust and dirt, is a pair of tiny glass shoes. Picking them up, carefully cradling the expertly crafted glass in her hands, she realise they're exactly like something out of the children's story book. Cinderella's little glass slippers that she dropped at midnight, sized for a child of only a few years.   
  
"Bill! Are you in there? I'm done fighting Nardole now! He's gone off to be grumpy somewhere!"   
  
Suddenly, there's a voice calling out behind her, and she's so surprised that she jump, one of the shoes slipping out of her hands, and before she can stop it its crashed down against the floor and broken.   
  
"AH!" Bill can't help her scream. The fragile little baby shoe has broken into a thousand pieces of jagged glass on the hard metal floor and she is left standing against the opposite wall, cradling the remaining shoe against her chest.   
  
"Bill! Are you alright?" The Doctor comes running, grabbing her by the arm and forcing her to look at him. His blue eyes are filled with concern and fright, never letting go of hers as his arms put her down and search for injuries, following the curves of her body until he is crouched at her toes, squeezing her feet inside the sneakers with his hands.   
  
She want to tell him to stop. Want to tell him that she is alright and he doesn't have to worry, but no words will pass her lips. Instead, she just stand there, glass shoe in hand, thinking of what had happened earlier that day.   
  
'How many people have you watched die?'   
  
He moved on.   
  
'Have you ever killed someone?'   
  
Yes   
  
'How many have you killed?'   
  
He moved on.   
  
Slowly, as he realise that there is no external injuries, The Doctor stands up and look at her again, their eyes meeting as she swallows, hard, and finally force words across her lips. "How many have you lost?" It’s a million dollar question and with the little glass shoe in hand she needs an answer.   
  
He looks at her, furrows his brows and frown at her, unsure and suspicious and she can tell he wonders, wonder why she asked and why she care.   
  
She wonders how stupid this old man really is, and what he has experienced, in order to really think that she would not care.   
  
Slowly, she extended her hand. She lift it from her chest and she holds it out to him and let him see what she is holding onto. She let him see the tiny glass slipper and measure his reaction She observe the sadness and pain that fills them and can't help to think that this is what he gets for moving on and forgetting.   
  
  
"How many have you lost, Doctor?" Her voice is a whisper but her eyes are burning, and she steps all the way up to his face, forcing the shoes into his wrinkled hands, folding them around it and pushing them against his chest instead. "This is not your shoe, Doctor. It is not my shoe. It is not the shoe of anyone you have ever even mentioned or showed me photos of! It's the shoe of a child!" She scream, her voice rising as her angers flare even more. She is angry and terrified and doesn’t know if she even want him to respond.   
  
But he doesn't give her a choice, because he doesn't answer. He cradles the shoe in shaking hands and Bill doesn’t think she's ever seen anyone look that guilty in her entire life.   
  
She’s seen the pictures standing on his desk, and she has realised that he's had a family, but she didn’t dare to think of what that meant in this new context.   
  
"Tell me her name, Doctor. Tell me the name of the girl who had that glass slipper." She look at him, tears glistening in both their eyes as she wait, feeling the horror and fear sinking deeper and deeper into her stomach as the answer doesn’t come. The moments pass, and she starts to think, that he really has moved on, that he has forgotten a little child that used to run around the TARDIS like a mini princess in her delicate glass slippers.

 

“Susan. First Claire, and then Susan.” At long last, the words come spilling out of her mouth along with years cascading down his cheeks. His hands are shaking so badly now, that Bill takes the shoe from him just to make sure it is not going to break.

 

“So you know their names.” She says, somewhere deep inside relieved that he still knew that.

 

“I never want to forget. I don't forget because I want to, but because I have to. Because my brain was designed to live for three, four, five thousand years and if I want to I can remember it all. But then I’d do nothing else. I’d get so lost in memories that it would be everything my life was anymore.” He pause, take a deep breath, and sigh. “Claire was my daughter, Susan her daughter in turn. They were a part of my family and I loved them, but they are gone and I let the rest.”

 

“I’m sorry. I really am I just…” Bill doesn’t know what to say. There are no words, when your looking in the face of a thousand year old alien, so very old and wary yet also so very kind and openhearted, after having forced him to remember people that he lost. It’d felt right at the time, but now she felt horrible, absolutely horrible, because The Doctor didn’t deserve this. “I’m really sorry.” She says finally, her head hung down in shame.

 

However, as she looks down upon the ground in shame, the Doctor wedge a hand under her chin, lifting a face again and forcing her to meet his eyes.

 

“It is not your fault.” He says, slow and deliberate as he reach out with his free hand to take the shoe from her holding it so they both can see it. “I am not a good man, and I should have told you as much. But I didn't, because I was afraid, that you would walk out on the adventures I had to offer.  As you know it's been a long time since I offered this opportunity to anyone, and I couldn't bare the thought of being rejected. “ He let go of her of her chin, looking away from her face and stepping away from her. She keeps looking at him, though, and watch as he crouched down and place the single glass slipper that started it all on the floor between them.

 

She watch it, equal parts curious and scared. The way it stands there, exactly in between him and her, cutting them off from one and another like an invisible line that can not be crossed, it just feels wrong.  


“I didn’t give you a choice before, because I didn't tell you the truth” The Doctor explains, standing back up and straightening his back. “But this is your choice. If you take the slipper you accept me. You accept that I have lost thousands that I loved, and watched as even lie died. You accept that I have killed billions” Another pause, and this time Bill could see something that almost looked frightened in his eyes. “But not by choice, and not without regret. If you take the slipper, Bill, you accept me for what I am and you agree to trust me.”

 

“And if I don't take the slipper?” Subconsciously, she moved closer to the frail slipper, but stopped short of actually touching it, her foot placed a few centimeters behind it.

 

“Leave it, and I take you home. I will let you walk away from this forever, even wipe your memory as originally planned, if that is what you wish.” He is dead serious, not looking at her face but focusing on the shoe. As she does, she suddenly remember that she’d broken the other one, and can't help but wonder if he was going to comment on  the fact that there was just one.

 

He doesn't, however, comment on it, but rather just keep staring as he waits for Bill’s decision.

 

The only problem is, Bill doesn’t know what to chose. She doesn’t want to go, but she didn’t know if she could accept a man that had killed billions, and whatever the reason might have been.

 

The minutes go by and she and The Doctor stay in some sort of a stand-still, the children's shoe between them the line waiting to be crossed, a gap that was to be bridged if only Bill wanted to.

 

When at least five minutes has passed, and she still didn’t know what to do, Bill started to feel antsy. She starts shifting and shuffling, waiting for The Doctor to walk away like he always seemed to do when his cold exterior was challenged.

 

Finally, she is almost about to walk out on him, because the ultimatum he’s given her is too impossible for her to chose either side, and she doesn't want to stand there and watch as he waited for her to make a move.

 

Then, she hears a voice whispering in her ear. It's a female voice, sweet like honey in her ear as it told her what it wanted her to do. “Stay. Take the slipper and stay. We need you. Me and my thief want you to stay here, to make him less alone.” It’s feather light, but filled with heavy concern, feeling words of joy and possibilities but also fear and worries directly into her brain , and at ‘me and my thief’ Bill realise who is talking to her.

 

The TARDIS

 

The TARDIS is begging for her to take the slipper and stay, and before she is aware of her actions she’s done just that. She’s run forth and grabbed the slipper, her fingers closing around the delicate glass as a surge of memories that was not hers filled her brain.

 

_“You’re so slow dad!”_

_A brown haired five year old dressed in a blue dress running down the halls like an expert and barely tripping in her miniature glass shoes. Following behind her is a brown haired man clad in red, both of them smiling and laughing as they go along._

They're both so very happy, the happiness itself ingrained in the memory and Bill can feel her own smile as she watch it.

 

_“Come on Grandpa!”_

_A brown haired girl, a little older than the last, slowly moving down the halls with some sort of regal grace that is badly measured because she looks as though she just wants to run already. She’s dressed in a green dress and a big blue crown and though she keeps looking over her shoulder she seems to be enjoying herself._

_Following directly behind her, is a frail looking older man with white hair and a patient smile. He is following her slowly, at his own pace, but trying to walk quicker to accommodate to the impatient girl waiting for him._

 

Also in this memory the happiness is engrained, an aura of forever bliss surrounding it like a protective bubble. Bill can feel the tears coming back, hot water dripping on her cheeks as she wans thrown out of the memories and back into reality.

 

There's a gray haired man standing before her, wrinkled and weary and so far from what he’d used to be, but he is still there. He is  still alive and breathing and she knows, she knows that the mirth and love and happiness was still there because she’d seen the way he acted around those orphans. He just hid it, deep down in a pile of things that hurt too much to bring forth too often.

 

“You chose to trust me.” He speak, and his voice is faint, barely there at all. He looks all shocked and pail and for a moment she consider if he needs to sit down, but then she shakes her head.

 

“The TARDIS told me to. She showed me what I needed to see and I...I understand.” All impulsive, she step forward quickly, arms latching onto his waist like a little child as she hug him tight. It only take him a moment too long to hug back and she smiled. “I’m here to stay now.” She whispered, burying her face in his chest. He was warm and safe and she liked it.

 

Above her, though she couldn’t see it, she could tell The Doctor was smiling too. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  
  



End file.
